


Family Bonding

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [46]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Deaf Character, Domestic Fluff, Epilepsy, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Brian's out of town when Justin gets a phone call.





	Family Bonding

I was working late in the studio when I got a call, a regular call, from some number I didn't recognize with a non-New York area code. I figured it was probably Brian; he was in Philadelphia for a few days at a conference, which usually means late nights at hotel bars with prospective clients. It wouldn't be the first time he'd gotten drunk and forgotten I'm Deaf. I didn't know why he'd be calling from someone else's phone, but...again, very little would be a first, where drunk Brian is concerned. 

I ignored the call, since I hadn't forgotten I was Deaf, and kept working on mixing the perfect shade of gray. A minute later a Facetime call came from the same number, so I mentally applauded Brian on his deductive reasoning skills and picked up.

Except it wasn't Brian. It was some girl I didn't know, and she immediately called to someone behind her and started talking to me.

“Hang on, hang on,” I said. “What?” I concentrated on her lips. “Am I Justin?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, I'm Justin. Who are you?”

She told me, probably, but I don't know what I was expecting to get from that.

“Okay, I don't...can you text me?” I said. “I'm Deaf, I don't...”

She held up a finger for me to wait and then turned the phone away from her, giving me a panoramic view of what looked like...a college party. Ah, fuck.

Sure enough, there was Molly, sitting on the floor with her head in her hands and a splotch of vomit on her shirt. Christ. At least she wasn't too out of it to give this girl my number.

“Molly,” I said. “Hey. Molly. Look at me.”

She didn't. I had no idea how loud it was at the party, or how loud I was being, really. I just knew my sister was a heap on the floor, and if some fucking college kid thought it was worth calling her brother, that couldn't be a good sign.

The original girl came back onscreen and said something that looked like a question.

I said, “Yeah, I'm in Chelsea, I'm on my way,” which probably covered whatever she was asking. “Text me where you are? The name of the dorm?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Thank you. Someone stay with her, please.” I hung up and packed my shit up, and the text came in as I was leaving. Third North, which was not Molly's dorm, but the NYU website said it was three blocks from Union Square. I'd have to transfer if I took the train there, and I didn't want to take that long, so I stuck my arm up for a cab as soon as I got out to the street.

I stopped someone on the sidewalk when I got out of the cab. “Hi, sorry, is this Third North?'

She said something I didn't catch any of but luckily involved pointing to two buildings over, so good enough. Someone was leaning against the front door with a cigarette and he moved to let me in, and for once I was thankful that I look like a goddamn college student. 

I asked him, “Hey, uh, is there a party somewhere in here?”

He said something around his cigarette, looking judgmental as fuck, so I gave up on him and headed inside. There was a steady stream of people headed up the stairs, so I just tagged along after them, and once we got to the third floor landing there were people everywhere, crowding the steps and leaking out of the dorm rooms. I could feel the bass beat from the music in my stomach, and I weaved my way around couples pressed up against the railings and water fountains.

I tapped one girl on the shoulder and she looked me skeptically up and down.

“Do you know Molly Taylor?” I asked her.

She cocked her ear towards me. “What?”

I raised my voice, probably. “Molly Taylor.”

She shook her head.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, and I kept going through the crowd, looking or anyone I recognized from the phone call. Someone grabbed my arm, and I turned around and found the girl who called me. “Oh, hey, hey,” I said.

She pointed to a nearby dorm room.

“Thank you,” I said, and she nodded. I dodged a guy running past me with his shirt off and a girl who scanned me and looked anything but skeptical and finally got into the room. Molly was curled up on the bed with her arms around her head. I put my hand on her shoulder and she shoved me off, eyes closed.

I said, “Yeah, it's me, you kind of have to look at me.”

**I'm sleeping,** she said.

“Get up.”

She opened her eyes and sat up slowly. **My head hurts,** she said, swaying some on the bed.

“Yeah, I bet. How much did you drink?”

**I can't hear you.**

**Then you're going to have to look at me. There you go. How much did you drink?**

**Like two.**

**Yeah, okay.**

**Why are you here? Is this your party?**

**Is this my...what the hell? Do you know where you are?**

She lay back down. **I'm going to sleep.**

**Yeah, I don't think so. Come on, get up.**

**Don't tell Mom,** she said.

**Then you're probably going to want to not die of alcohol poisoning in the middle of a dorm party.**

**So fucking dramatic.**

**Your skin's cold, you're confused, and there's puke on your shirt. I'm not being dramatic. Arm around my shoulders, come on.** I helped her up from the bed and caught her when she stumbled.

**Brian's going to kill me,** she said.

**

I considered taking her back to the apartment, I really did, but she threw up on the sidewalk as soon as we were outside, so once I'd cleaned her up and instructed her that she was _not_ to throw up in a cab, I hauled her into one and told the driver to take us to New York Pres.

I sat her down in a chair in the waiting room, and she curled up and put her head on her knees. I gave the nurse at the front desk a smile. “Hi, is Dr. Chanders on call?”

She didn't shake her head, so I was going to assume what she said was something affirmative.

“Could you page her for me, please?”

Daphne was there in a flash, wearing a white coat over her scrubs and looking so fucking professional. **Hey, hey,** she said. **Are you okay?**

I pointed to Molly.

**Oh, wow. Okay, let's get her in a bed.**

**I found her at a dorm party,** I said. **She's really out of it, do you think you need to pump her stomach?**

**We'll see. Come on.**

Daphne got us into a little cubicle and talked to Molly some, checking her eyes and putting one of the oxygen clips on her finger, then had a nurse start an IV and made Molly blow into a breathalzyer. She looked at the readout and frowned.

**Shit,** I said. **Is it bad?**

Daphne shook her head. **It's .09.**

**I don't know what that means.**

**It means she really shouldn't be this out of it.**

I felt something tighten in my chest. **What do you mean?**

**The person who called you to pick her up, can you get in touch with them?**

**Yeah, I have their number...they don't sign, I can do a relay service—**

**No, it's fine, I'll talk to them.** She took my phone from me. **Sit and hold her hand, okay?**

I hate hearing people doing things for me normally, but this felt more like a doctor doing a medical thing for me, so I nodded. **Yeah, okay.** I sat by the bed and slipped Molly's hand between mine. It's funny. I spend so much time watching people's hands now, but I still hadn't realized before then how much hers looked like our mom's. She looked so much like Mom, really. I pushed her hair off her face. “You're okay.”

**Whats going on?**

“I don't know yet, baby. We're gonna see.”

Daphne came back and handed me my phone, then put her hand on Molly's ankle. **So your friend wasn't all that helpful, but she said it looked like you lost consciousness at the party. Do you remember anything like that?**

Molly shook her head, and I squeezed her hand.

Daphne said, **Okay, that's okay. We want to run some tests, but we're really backed up tonight so it might be a while. We're going to get you settled in a room, okay?**

I said, **What tests?**

**Some blood tests, and an EEG and an MRI.**

**EEG and...** I blinked. **You think she had a seizure?**

**

The EEG was normal—which didn't mean much, mine are normal all the time—the blood tests weren't back yet, and they finally brought her down for an MRI early in the morning. She was still there when Brian texted me asking if I was awake. He called me after I answered, lying in his hotel bed, sleepy and shirtless and so fucking hot. He squinted at me, reaching over to his nightstand for a cigarette. **Hey, that's a hospital.**

**Yeah.**

**You okay?** he said, lighting the cigarette. I could float away forever on the way Brian multitasks worrying about me. I don't know, it's something about the combination of Brian caring about me with Brian not being incapacitated by this shit. It's sustainable, which is just about the most refreshing word possible where me and Brian are concerned.

I said, **Yeah, it's not me, it's Molly.**

**Molly?** Her sign name is a M next to her mouth. It's based on mine; all the Taylor signs are. Mom's, Molly's, Luke's.

**This girl called me from a dorm party. I thought she'd just drunk too much, but her blood alcohol level wasn't that high and Daphne—I'm at Daphne's hospital—she thinks she had a seizure.**

Brian said, **What? Why would she have had a seizure?**

**I don't know.**

**Yours are from the bashing, they're not genetic.**

**We always just assumed that,** I said. **Maybe I would have had them anyway and the bashing just made them happen worse, or sooner.**

**Where's Molly now? How is she?** He was out of bed and getting dressed.

**Getting a MRI.**

**Okay, that's good.** He pulled on his shirt. **Wait, you said this happened at a dorm party?**

**Yeah.**

**This was last night? Why didn't you call me?**

**I don't know, I kind of had my hands full.**

**You did all this shit alone?**

I said, **I went to a party and got her and brought her to Daphne. It wasn't hard.**

**And talked to a whole bunch of hearing people, and stayed at the hospital all night...** He got his shoes on. **Did you even take your meds?**

**Yeah, Daphne got me a dose.**

**You should have called me. I'm a twenty minute flight away. I could have been there. I can take care of the hearing shit so you can sit with Molly.**

**I didn't need you to take care of shit,** I said. **I handled it.**

He checked his watch. **I'm going to go to the airport and get a flight. I'll be there soon.**

**Brian—**

**You should have called me,** he said, and then he hung up, and I resisted the urge to throw my fucking phone across the room. 

**

Brian swept into the room two hours later. He kissed me, and even though I was pissed at him I found myself clinging to his collar. 

**I talked to Daphne,** he said, and I let go of him. 

**You don't have to talk to Daphne,** I said. **I know what's going on. I can tell you.**

**I like Daphne,** he said. He went over to the bed where Molly was sleeping and looked her over before picking her chart off the foot of the bed and leafing through it. **Okay, this is okay.**

**They think it might just have been a freak thing,** I said. **I had them page Dr. A. She said it's pretty common to just have one seizure and never have another one, though obviously with her family history...**

Brian said, **Yeah, okay. Okay. So we just wait and see if she has another one? They're not going to start her on meds?**

**Not unless she has another one.**

**I don't like that. Who's her doctor? I'm going to talk to her doctor.**

**Brian.**

**And I'm going to see when she's getting discharged. Have you eaten?**

**She's getting discharged in a few hours.**

**Have you called your mom?**

**Not yet.**

**I can do it.**

**Molly doesn't want to tell her yet.**

Brian checked her chart again. **She has health insurance from school?**

**Yeah, it's taken care of.**

He rubbed his hands together. **Okay, well, what do you need? What can I do?**

**Nothing,** I said. **There's nothing right now.**

**I came back to help, there's got to be something.**

**I didn't ask you to come back,** I said. 

He gave me a look.

**What?** I said. **I told you I had this under control. I didn't need rescuing. And now you're pissy with me that, what, you came all the way home and I don't have a task for you?**

He pinched his nose. **Okay, you're tired, you're stressed, you're picking a fight—**

**I'm not picking anything.**

**You should have called me. What if Daphne hadn't been here last night? What would you have done?**

**I would have gotten an interpreter, or I would have made it work with hearing people like I do every fucking day of my life. You have _got_ to get rid of this image of me as someone who can't navigate hearing shit without you.**

He set his jaw. **I didn't say that. I know you can make it work, you can make anything work, but in an emergency situation it's just faster—**

**Faster to wait for you to get on a plane and come to the ER?**

**I could have interpreted over Skype—**

**I didn't need an interpreter! I managed it! It's managed!**

He sighed, running his hand through his hair. **I'm going to get you some coffee,** he said. **And I'm going to talk to her doctor about this medication thing.**

**I don't want coffee.**

**Tough shit,** he said on his way out.

**

The doctor told Brian exactly what Molly had told me he'd said about how they don't start medication for just one seizure, especially when there was no direct proof Molly had had one, and told him the exact same thing he'd written down for me about when he expected to discharge her, and Brian came to the exact conclusion I already had that Molly should come back to our apartment for the night and we'd bring her back to school in the morning.

She was exhausted—nights in the hospital are pretty awful for hearing people, I'm told—and she settled in on our pull-out and watched videos on her phone in-between naps. Brian sat and talked to her out loud for a little while, and I went out to the balcony and worked on a painting, even though it was cold, just so I didn't have to watch that. 

Brian came out eventually. **Hey.**

“Hey.”

**I'm going to run to the store, there's no fucking food in this house. You need anything that's not on the list?**

“No.”

**We're out of that nasty cereal you like. You want more?**

I shrugged, and Brian leaned against the railing. 

**Could you look at me, please?** he said.

I put down my paintbrush. **I am looking at you. I'm answering your questions, aren't I?**

**Sort of.**

I crossed my arms. He looked out over the water for a little while.

**You're pissed at me,** he said.

**So? You're pissed at me.**

**Yeah, but I know why I'm pissed at you. I don't know why you're pissed at me.**

**Okay, why are you pissed at me?**

**Because you should have called me,** he said.

I said, **Why? Why am I not allowed to fucking handle something on my own? Why do you not think I'm not capable of that?**

Brian massaged his temple. **This is not a Deaf thing.**

**Really? Because you were just in there fucking talking in English to my sister—**

**I was just making sure she understood everything the doctors said,** Brian said. **Her signing isn't fluent and she was pretty out of it at the hospital. I was making sure she got everything.**

**And she knew everything already, right?**

He shrugged a little.

**Because I spoke to her in English at the hospital,** I said. **I made sure she understood everything. I can take care of her.**

**I know you can, Justin, Christ.**

**Then why do you have to sweep in and fucking manage everything? You're badgering me about not calling you because you don't trust me to handle shit! Why else would you be mad that I didn't call you right away?**

He stared at me. **Are you serious right now?**

**What the fuck do you mean, am I serious?**

He shook his head. **Never mind. I'm going to the store.**

**Now who's walking out?**

**I'm not walking out. I'm going to get some fucking groceries. I'll be back in half an hour.**

It only took me half of that half hour to realize that I was a fucking idiot. Okay, sue me, I was coming off of very little sleep and a lot of interactions with hearing people and Brian had been bossing me around since he got back. I wasn't at my best. I checked on Molly, told her I'd be back in a little while, and walked across the street to the bodega, where I found Brian doing his usual obsessive ritual of taking a billion years to pick out a few pieces of fruit. 

He glanced at me, then back down at the apple. Fine.

“You were worried about Molly,” I said.

He sighed and put the apple down. 

I said, **You wanted me to call you right away because you care about Molly.**

**We're seriously doing this here? In a fucking bodega?**

I shrugged.

**Of course I was worried about Molly, come on. How did you not...you really didn't get that?**

**I'm sorry. I'm an idiot.**

**Fuck, Justin, she's my sister. You're really surprised that I think I should fucking get a call if she has a seizure?**

**I don't know...**

**You should have...I mean, Christ, you need to have a fucking _revelation_ to figure this out? Why the fuck didn't you assume I was worried in the first place? I'm that much of an asshole?** I could see the insecurity behind his eyes, and it killed me. 

I said, **Okay, to be fair, you didn't really come in acting worried,** I said. **You came in all 'Brian to the rescue,' and—**

**That's what I do when I'm worried! You know that. How do you not know that? I thought you fucking...**

**Do you know how exhausting it is trying to keep track of how every single fucking thing you do means something else? I get this right a lot of the time, but the fucking codes and signs and hidden meanings...I get _exhausted_ sometimes. You give me a lot of hoops to jump through.**

**I give everyone a lot of hoops to jump through,** he said.

**I know that.**

**You're supposed to see through my shit,** he said. **That's what you do.**

**I do most of the time.**

He sighed.

**I'm not perfect,** I said. **And you're not easy.**

**I know.**

I put my hand on his chest. “There's always the option to, you know. Give me less shit to see through."

He ducked his forehead against the top of my head. **Yeah.** He took a deep breath. **I'm trying.**

“I know.” 

He pulled away from me so I could see him. **I don't like this seizure thing,** he said. **I don't like it for her, and I don't like what it means for you.**

**I know.**

**It doesn't really matter why you have seizures, I know that, but...I don't like not knowing what I thought I knew.**

**I don't either.**

**And I hate this wait and see thing with her. I hate waiting.**

**We'll keep an eye on her.**

**She was supposed to be the good Taylor, you know. I didn't have to worry about her. She had her shit together.**

I kissed him. **She's okay.**

**Yeah, I know.**

**That was very good,** I said. **I'm very proud.**

**God, shut up.** He shoved me away. **Can we please get out of here? I still haven't been welcomed home properly.**

**From your long, long journey?**

**Yeah. Go get your fucking cereal.**

**Author's Note:**

> I aaaam actively seeking requests, so hit me up.


End file.
